Yes, here's another fairy tale retelling review. As you can see, or better yet "read", it seems I can't get enough of them.

Placing contemporary teenage characters in a fairy tale scenario was a very interesting choice, that lead to this interesting adventure through quite a few of Grimm Fairy Tales.

Plot wise, let me tell you that this one could merit a 4 to a 4.5 stars!!

The plot is truly creative, and i never had an inkling to where this was going!

It was truly a pleasure to see how the author was able to converge the initial points of views (four), into a strong and cohesive plot.

The characters were extremely appealing, and interesting enough to follow. In fact, all of them could steal the leading character role.

Negative points:

This ebook is less than pristine when it comes to the editing department... maybe due to the fact that this is an arc? I really hope that's the reason why...

There are quite a number of missing words, strange punctuation, and at the beginning of each chapter we are thrown a little off route by an initial sentence that ends up being the chapter's title...

Something that i can't avoid mentioning, are the dialogue tags (or speech tags), _eg: he talked, she answered, he walked_ that for me, were somewhat abused.

Also I can't help feeling, that the tale would have been much stronger if Andy's protagonism had been shared with Quinn.

It's not that I disliked Andy! On the contrary!

But the way Quinn was presented at the beginning of the story lead me to expect much more of her character! In fact I commented with Isa that I was expecting Quinn to have Maya's ( a character from Kelley Armstrong series) charisma and strength!

She climbs mountains, saves boys from tree tops and she isn't white... she felt original!

She could have, better yet, should have shared a more active protagonism with Andy!!

That way we wouldn't feel a sort of "division" between those two: the one that mostly does the rescues, by opposition with the one that ends up being rescued all the time.

And the thing is, due to their initial characterization, I couldn't help feeling that Quinn would be the leading character, not Andy.

This book definitely needed more girl power!! And those two had everything on their side to be a sure win.

Also, action scenes are very interesting, but they could and should have been interspaced with consistent character development... I wanted to "feel" the characters bonding with each another! Let's not forget that in the beginning of the story they were all strangers to each other...

This could have been achieved with more instances of dialogue between the four main characters. Relevant ones. Also, more informations regarding the lives they used to have would further enrich the tale.

Then I don't know if this is some sort of requisite to write a YA novel:

Romances.

They _yes, as in plural _ are hinted at in this story, _sometimes more than that _ but honestly there isn't the necessary and fundamental character development to explain why they needed to exist in this one!

Then there was the occasional jealous behaviour from almost all the characters, that felt somewhat displaced, between individuals that up until a few days ago, had never even heard of one another!

Four teenagers who suddenly find themselves in another reality, where fairy tales are real, and where they supposedly are meant to play a part, should have bigger concerns than "having" to fall in love.

Positives:

Well, besides the very strong and imaginative plot, dynamic characters, and fluid writing. I liked how the author fought the commonly accepted ideas that fairy tales are supposed to always have a happy ending.

Oh, and can I just say how happy I was when I realized that psychotic and obsessive behaviors weren't going to be glorified in this story??

Thank you!!

Let's just say that the only perfect thing that the Prince of this story has is that he's a perfect example of guys girls should just run from!!

Bottom Line: Very promising story and series. I only hope that the issues I mentioned in this review won't appear on the second volume.